MHSAA basketball postseason could be improved with some small changes

If you are a fan of high school basketball in March, you have seen this before.

An undefeated team faces a 19-1 team on Monday of district tournament week and one of those teams sees their season end in the first few hours of the postseason.

But does it have to be that way?

No, it doesn't.

I think high school basketball district tournaments could easily be seeded based on record, winning percentage, whatever it takes, to have the better teams get a chance to play deeper into the postseason if possible.

The above scenario of a 20-0 team vs. a 19-1 squad is entirely possible throughout the state because district pairings are based on a blind draw among the teams in that district. Any team can play any other team at any time - it doesn't matter what you did during the regular season.

On one side, that is the magic of March when it comes to high school basketball in Michigan. All boys' and girls' basketball teams get to play in the postseason no matter what they did in the regular season. And every team has a chance to win a championship.

But it is also the frustration of February. Frustration when teams start to look toward MHSAA district pairings and realize they have built a great regular season, but the reward will be to face another quality team right away in the tournament. The head-scratching continues when there is a group of sub-.500 teams on the other side of the bracket playing each other for a chance at a spot in the finals.

The bad news is that the blind draw continues this season.

The good news is, that could change in the future.

"Seeding has been a topic that has been talked about a lot by our sports committees," said Mark Uyl of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. "I can tell you that basketball people are looking in to that. Both in the opening level at the district, and maybe even at the Final Four level.

"At the district level, if nothing else, we could look into separating the top two teams so they could possible meet on Friday instead of the opening round on Monday. Could really see it soon at at the Final Four where we seed the four teams so, in theory, the best two teams meet in the final."

St. Philip's Hunter Haley and the Tigers will open district play against Jackson Christian next week.(Photo: Al Lassen/For the Enquirer)

That kind of seeding already happens in other sports in the MHSAA, namely wrestling. It makes for a much more dramatic tournament with the best rising to the top to face each with everything on the line.

However, Uyl also admits seeding has been a topic of discussion for basketball for many years and yet there hasn't been any change.

The problem there is coming up with a way to do it that everyone can agree on.

"With any of these seeding plans, the devil is in the details. Anyone can say, yeah, we should seed the tournament. Ask any one group and 90-percent of them would say yes, we should do that," Uyl said. "But once you get down to the details of how to do it, you get lots of different ideas on what criteria should be used - records, strength of schedule, stuff like that. That is where it gets tough."

Good enough reason for the delay in making this change to make things better for the high school basketball tournament? Not really, but that's where we are at.

While we are trying to fix the basketball postseason by adding seeding to the mix, here are a few other ideas for the MHSAA that could make March more magical.

Let's take a page out of the postseason playbook of football and add divisions to the basketball tournament.

With the growth of charter schools and home school programs with basketball teams, there is a very diverse group that plays in the Class D level of the basketball tournament.

Adding a fifth division in basketball, would help along these lines.

This has already happened in football with the addition of 8-man football. Very small schools that find it hard to compete even at the Class D level, due to enrollment or dwindling interest in the football program, are flourishing in the 8-man football division.

This could happen in basketball, too. If a school has less than 80 or so students, it could face schools of its size in a would-be Class E or Division 5 tournament.

Currently, this isn't the case. For instance, Marshall Academy has 56 students and eight senior boys in the school and plays in the same district as St. Philip, with 156 students.

Yes, only about a difference of 100, which wouldn't be a lot at the Class A level. But in terms of ratio, St. Philip is three times the size of Marshall Academy. Not a fair playing field, and often this shows up on the court. Bad for the kids playing, not great for the fans watching.

And my rant on the high school basketball tourney will end with this one - travel.

District tournaments are organized so teams in the same geographic area can play each other before moving on to the regionals. And this generally works, especially if all the teams have to travel to one site.

But in some districts, with seven or more teams, first-round matchups are allowed to be played on home sites. This was initially set up to keep travel costs down, but it doesn't always work out that way.

In the Class A district at Loy Norrix, which has seven teams, schools will play at home sites in the first round before semifinals and finals are moved to Loy Norrix. In this case, Lakeview will travel to the Lansing area to play Holt on Monday. On the same night, Mason, a Lansing area team, will travel to play Gull Lake. The Lakeview bus and the Mason bus will basically pass each other on the highway going to the game.

The blind draw is again the villain in this situation. But couldn't common sense prevail here? Why not have Lakeview and Gull Lake play in the first round in Battle Creek area and Holt and Mason play in the first round in the Lansing area?

The MHSAA does market its postseason tournament as March Magic. And overall, it is one of the best times of the year for high school sports fans. You might even call it magical.